Wine making is a millennium-plus, old craft. At its most basic, traditionally wine quality grapes have been crushed to form a “must” that is pressed to extract the juice which is then fermented in two stages, a first, primary fermentation aerobic stage using yeast to convert the natural sugar in the grapes into alcohol while the resultant carbon dioxide is allowed to escape. This produces the base wine followed by a secondary, anerobic, malolactic fermentation stage. The fermented raw wine is settled, filtered, racked or/and riddled and aged before bottling.
More recently, vacuum flashing of heated must has been used to concentrate the must before pressing or direct primary fermentation stages. The ageing may occur in barrels or tanks (vats), and various settling, clarification, filtration, fining, racking and riddling protocols may be used to remove precipitates developed during fermentation and ageing.
Sparkling wines have uniquely different flavor characteristics than non-sparkling wines, in part due to the carbonation present in the wine. There are four main methods of sparkling wine production. The first is simple injection of carbon dioxide (CO2), the process used in soft drinks, but this produces big bubbles that dissipate quickly in the glass. The second is the Metodo Charmat, created by a French vine grower in Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule, France, in which the wine undergoes a secondary fermentation in bulk tanks, and is bottled under pressure. This method is used for Prosecco and Asti (Asti Spumonte) in particular, and produces smaller, longer-lasting bubbles. This is now used widely around the world to produce light, delicate sparkling wines. The third method is the traditional method, known as the méthode champenoise, in which the effervescence is produced by secondary fermentation in the bottle, producing a more complex wine. This method is used for the production of Champagne and other quality sparkling wines and is somewhat more expensive than the Charmat process. The fourth method is the “transfer method”. This method takes the fermented first juice pressing, or cuvée, to bottle for secondary fermentation, which allows for the additional complexity. After the bottled cuvee has spent a selected amount of time with its yeast, the wine is transferred out of the individual secondary fermentation bottles into a larger tank, for subsequent bottling. The net results of these processes are wines having a unique palate sensation resulting from the presence of the varying degrees of carbonation introduced by their respective processes and the relative complexity of the wine.
Mouth feel is readily recognized as strikingly different for sparkling wines as compared to non-sparkling wines. A less recognized aspect is that sparkling wines tend to bathe the palate, again in large part due to the carbonation, and the relief of the carbonation helps spread the wine up to the palate, as distinct from resting primarily on the tongue. The result is engagement in the mouth, of taste in both the taste organs of the tongue and the sensory endings in the palate.
Accordingly, there is an unmet need in the art to develop economical processes of producing non-sparkling wines that exhibit excellent color solids and enhanced taste essences of aroma and flavor in the entire mouth, rather than being dominantly focused on the tongue, which processes fit in the current viticulture and vindication infrastructure without introducing carbonation, yet which can take advantage of the complexities and richness of non-sparkling wine structures. There is an additional unmet need to provide an economical process of producing sparkling wines and fortified wines which exhibit enhanced taste essences of aroma and flavor in the entire mouth. There is an unmet need to provide an economical process of producing low- and non-alcoholic wine products that have enhanced wine essences to counter the otherwise “thin” nature of such products.